Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects. It has acquired several proprietary software product codebases through corporate mergers and acquisitions and has released such software under open source licenses. As of June 2013[update], Red Hat is the largest corporate contributor to Linux.[6]

In December 2005 CIO Insight magazine conducted its annual "Vendor Value Survey", in which Red Hat ranked #1 in value for the second year in a row.[22] Red Hat stock became part of the NASDAQ-100 on December 19, 2005.

Red Hat acquired open-source middleware provider JBoss on June 5, 2006, and JBoss became a division of Red Hat. On September 18, 2006, Red Hat released the Red Hat Application Stack, which integrated the JBoss technology and which was certified by other well-known software vendors.[23][24] On December 12, 2006, Red Hat stock moved from trading on NASDAQ (RHAT) to the New York Stock Exchange (RHT). In 2007 Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix and made an agreement with Exadel to distribute its software.

On December 15, 2009, it was reported that Red Hat will pay $8.8 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to the restatement of financial results from July 2004. The suit had been pending in US District Court in North Carolina. Red Hat reached the proposed settlement agreement and recorded a one-time charge of $8.8 million for the quarter that ended Nov. 30.[29]

On January 10, 2011, Red Hat announced that it would expand its headquarters in two phases, adding 540 employees to the Raleigh operation, and investing over $109 million. The state of North Carolina is offering up to $15 million in incentives. The second phase involves "expansion into new technologies such as software visualization and technology cloud offerings".[30]

Red Hat sponsors the Fedora Project, a community-supported open-source project that aims to promote the rapid progress of free and open-source software and content. Fedora aims for rapid innovation using open processes and public forums.[34]

The Fedora Project Board, which comprises community leaders and representatives of Red Hat, leads the project and steers the direction of the project and of Fedora, the Linux distribution it develops. Red Hat employees work with the code alongside community members, and many innovations within the Fedora Project make their way into new releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using open-source software. Customers pay one set price for unlimited access to services such as Red Hat Network and up to 24/7 support.[35]

In September 2014, however, CEO Jim Whitehurst announced that Red Hat was "in the midst of a major shift from client-server to cloud-mobile...(T)he prize is the chance to establish open source as the default choice of this next era, and to position Red Hat as the provider of choice for enterprises' entire cloud infrastructure."[36]

Dogtail, an open-source automated graphical user interface (GUI) test framework initially developed by Red Hat, consists of free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is written in Python. It allows developers to build and test their applications. Red Hat announced the release of Dogtail at the 2006 Red Hat Summit.[37][38]

The platform strives to incorporate all the above aspects of HPC into one IT infrastructure for better performance, reliability, and interoperability. It claims to simplify and automate a range of IT tasks of deployment, operation, managing and monitoring of clustered and distributed infrastructure and applications.

Red Hat produces the online publication Opensource.com. The site highlights ways open source principles apply in domains other than software development. The site tracks the application of open source philosophy to business, education, government, law, health, and life.

In 2007 Red Hat announced that it had reached an agreement with some free software and open source (FOSS) companies that allowed it to make a distribution portal called Red Hat Exchange, reselling FOSS software with the original branding intact.[43][44] However, by 2010 Red Hat had abandoned the Exchange program to focus their efforts more on their Open Source Channel Alliance which began in April 2009.[45]

Red Hat has some employees working full-time on free and open source software projects, such as two full-time employees working on the free software radeon (David Airlie and Jerome Glisse[52]) and one full-time employee working on the free software nouveau graphic drivers.[citation needed]

Over and above Red Hat's major products and acquisitions, Red Hat programmers have produced software programming-tools and utilities to supplement standard Unix and Linux software. Some of these Red Hat "products" have found their way from specifically Red Hat operating environments via open-source channels to a wider community. Such utilities include:

Red Hat, Inc created its subsidiary Red Hat India to deliver Red Hat software, support, and services to customers in India.[59] Colin Tenwick, vice president and general manager of Red Hat EMEA said that "the opening of [Red Hat India] is in response to the rapid adoption of Red Hat Linux in the subcontinent. Demand for open source solutions from the Indian markets is rising and Red Hat wants to play a major role in this region".[59] Red Hat India has worked with local companies to enable adoption of open source technology in both government[60] and education.[61]

Red Hat's first major acquisition was Delix Computer GmbH-Linux Div, the Linux based operating system division of Delix Computer, a German computer company, on July 30, 1999.

Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions, a company that provided commercial support for free software, on January 11, 2000 it was the company's largest acquisition for $674 million. Michael Tiemann, co-founder of Cygnus, served as the chief technical officer of Red Hat after the acquisition. Red Hat made the most acquisitions in 2000 with five: Cygnus Solutions, Bluecurve, Wirespeed Communications, Hell's Kitchen Systems, and C2Net. On June 5, 2006, Red Hat acquired open source middleware provider JBoss for $420 million and integrated it as its own division of Red Hat.

On December 14, 1998, Red Hat made its first divestment, when Intel and Netscape acquired undisclosed minority stakes in the company. The next year, on March 9, 1999, Compaq, IBM, Dell and Novell each acquired undisclosed minority stakes in Red Hat.

^Kammerer, Roland (2008-11-04). "Linux in Safety-Critical Applications"(PDF). Vienna: Technische Universität Wien. p. 59. Retrieved 2010-01-17. In December of 2007 Red Hat made a formal product announcement of a product that supports some kinds of real-time extensions.[...] This product is called Red Hat MRG (Messaging, Real Time Grid) platform. The core component is a real-time enhanced kernel that replaces the normal kernel of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux product.

^"Red Hat Appoints New Country General Manager For India". TechnoFirst. 1 Feb 2011. Retrieved 15 Apr 2011. “Open source has seen solid traction with enterprises in India. Not only has the Indian Government been at the forefront of adopting open source technologies, but Indian enterprises too have been avid users of open source software for mission-critical purposes,” noted Kumar. He adds, “India’s strong engineering credentials has made it an active contributor to the open source development engine. We look forward to working with the community and enterprises to take open source development and adoption to the next level in India.”

^"Red Hat commits to modernizing education system in India". Redhat Press Release. 20 Mar 2006. Retrieved 15 Apr 2011. Javed Tapia, President, Red Hat Indian Subcontinent, said, "With open source software, we can modernize the education system far more rapidly than we can with proprietary software. Open source gives schools flexibility and control over their IT infrastructure and freedom from expensive licensing schemes. Open source also helps in building a participative community of educationists and technologists. It is therefore, the way forward, for India's education system and we are pleased to partner with a progressive organization like Lotus Learning Systems Society to take this initiative forward."